Although C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956) are still hugely popular today, some critics have accused the books of representing masculinity and femininity in an outmoded way. The three ...Walden Media films, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010), appear to adopt a more contemporary perspective, especially as far as the representation of fighting girls is concerned. While Lewis seemed slightly reluctant to show women playing an active role on the battlefield, Andrew Adamson, who directed the first two films, lets Susan, the female protagonist, fight alongside the boys and even gives her a leading role in the battle scenes of the 2008 film. However, the presence of fighting girls remains largely symbolic, because they are artificially put forward in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and because their actions are presented in a stereotypical fashion in Prince Caspian. As for the director of the third film Michael Apted, he treats Lucy, the female protagonist who replaces her older sister Susan, in a much more egalitarian way.
In spite of being written over three decades ago, Mills's posthumously published "Manifesto" not only anticipates but transcends the majority, if not the totality, of the scholarship on Tolkien, ...race, and racisms which has been published since 2003. Scholars in philosophy and related fields familiar with Mills's work will recognize that the essay was a "critical exploration of how a fictional racial hierarchy strikingly illuminates the ongoing influence of certain old racist ideas on our present day sic social realities." Reid has invited a wide-ranging Tolkienists who have read the essay to respond, briefly, on the significance of the essay to their work
Reflecting on moving image affect and human-computer interaction, the following paper considers the connections between elective states of loneliness and different spectatorship habits, including ...excessive media consumption and escapism into nostalgic media texts. Comparing the experience
of communal spectatorship fostered by the space of the cinema in the early twentieth century to the accessibility and endless choice of moving image content facilitated by streaming platforms, it also considers the cultural value and the status of moving image as a manifestation in the world.
Drawing on examples from streaming platforms' content, and especially the model provided by Disney Plus, the following exploration illustrates the transformation of familiar media texts into emotionally charged objects of nostalgia, agents of deeply rooted childhood memories, and often, sources
of comfort. Their presence on handheld devices facilitates new forms of engagement, including repetitive viewing, tactility and increased levels of intimacy and interactivity through the nature of touchscreens, including holding, scrolling, pinching, swiping and other performative gestures.
Drawing on existing definitions of loneliness and emerging theories of audience engagement with touch-screen technologies, this paper considers practices of repetitive watching and binge-watching, new forms of viewing familiar content, as well as the spectators' historic relationship to Disney
content, as responses to loneliness triggered by emotional or social isolation.
From 1954 to 1956, tens of thousands of still photographs were taken, reviewed, printed, and circulated to promote Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). By tracing the conflicts that ...emerged over their management, this study centers the photographs and their distribution within an ecosystem of public relations, print media, and film production. While studio photographers produced the bulk of the photographs, their role was overshadowed by celebrity photographers, including Yousuf Karsh and Yul Brynner. Changes in the visual media landscape and Hollywood's photographic infrastructure threatened both the still photographers and the ability of studio publicists to shape the narrative.
